Last weekend Amy and I got cheap flights to Tasmania. Where is Tasmania? You may ask. It is a small island located in the bottom right hand corner of Australia as you look at in on a map. I’ve added a picture of Australia and a reference for locating Tasmania below -

We got a fantastic deal on the flights and saved ourselves $20 each by getting the ‘light flyer’ option with jetstar, which meant that we could only take carry on baggage. We bought special suitcases that pass as cabin luggage but still carry a lot of clothes for $100 each, thus a total cost saving of -$80 each.

We booked a suite at the Cradle Mountain Lodge that was recommended to us by everyone so we needed a method of getting there as it was a 2 hour drive from Launceston, the airport we flew into. Our luck had started as we got a “double upgrade” on our car from the basic little cars to a nice Mitsubushi Lancer MI-VTEC. For all the top gear fans, I’d like to say it was a decent car, it was asthetically very nice and it was spacious and easy to drive, however, it lacked any real power and didn’t really feel like it was doing anything when pushed to 100 from zero which felt like it took about 10 minutes. I certainly wouldn’t recommend buying this model.

Hire Car with Hydro Plant in Background

We got to Cradle Mountain driving at dusk and nearly running over about 30 paddy melon’s. We actually saw a Eastern Quoll on the road but didn’t know what it was until later. After the “double upgrade” on the car we thought our luck had come to an end, but not so in Tasmania! The lady at the desk upgraded us from the room we had to the King Billy Suites. This was actually the room we wanted but couldn’t justify the extra costs. It was probably the best hotel experience I’ve ever had, it had a double shower, our own jacuzzi and a fire place that was fun to get going -

King Billy Suite

The next morning we walked down to the main lodge to get breakfast, the walk was down a little footpath and it was icey cold, we came across a lake which had a few lodges around it for this fantastic view -

Lake in the Morning

After breakfast we put on our thermals and hats and coats which we have not done since going to China and the UK and headed down to the actual Cradle Mountain to do some endurance walking. When we got down there we settled on the 2 hour Dove Lake circuit which was a boardwalk around the outside of the lake. Taking all precautions I signed our names into the walkers registration book and we headed off. Cradle Mountain itself is fantastic and the walk lets you take in some great scenary, waterfalls and ’suicide rock’ which was in the rock in the left hand of this photo next to the water (you can walk right on top of it) -

Cradle Mountain Itself

We were exhausted from the walk because lets face it we are no Rach and Mike so we headed back to our King Billy Suite and had a relaxing afternoon in the jacuzzi. Outside our door was a little paddy melon pademelon that was having a nice time eating a piece of apple -

Cute Little Pademelon

That evening we went on a night spotting tour in a 4WD which probably had the worst window visibility vehicle I’d ever been in, however it was still good fun to drive around with an informed national park driver and shine bright lights into these little creatures eyes (they didn’t seem to mind but I can’t imagine spotlights shined onto nocturnal animals is very good for them). We saw another Quoll which was very lucky apparently and loads more pademelons. We then saw a wombat with a joey and another type of kangaroo different from the pademelon.

Here’s me with the spotlight tour vehicle which deceptively looks like it has great window visibility -

Cradle Mountain Spotlight 4WD

That night we went to the restaurant which was very nice, I had a pancake thing which had beans in it and lots of butter. I probably wouldn’t have it again but it was good to try something different, Amy had Lamb which was very nice. To get a wine you go down to the cellar and choose one yourself which Amy thought was brilliant.

On our last day we did the shorter King Billy Track walk which took only 40 minutes and I found out that King Billy wasn’t just the name of our room type but actually a type of pine. Here’s Amy with the sign -

Amy and the King Billy Track

Our flight out wasn’t until late so we drove up to the North of Tasmania to check out the wine region. It was very nice but not as bustling compared to the Hunter Valley. We also checked out Launceston town centre, it was a bit depressing to be honest just a high street and a Myer’s that looked like it was stocking mainland Australia’s rejects.

It was a brilliant weekend and vey relaxing if you ever get a chance to go to Tasmania and want a nice relaxing time I recommend the Cradle Mountain Lodge King Billy Suites and they didn’t even have to pay me to say that! Video coming soon in High Definition!

Last weekend we went to Melbourne to celebrate Simone hitting the big three zero. Being in my mid-twenties it was an incredible experience of things to come for me in the distant future.

The Gang

Amy and I flew down early in the morning on jetstar, a cheaper airline that doesn’t actually fly you to your destination but actually to an airport somewhat close to your destination. So we got the bus that takes you from Avalon to Melbourne. It was just a shuttle bus but the driver obviously takes pride in his job so every 5 minutes we would get some information about what we were passing. So we now know that the nationwide distribution centre for k-mart is located just outside of Melbourne, where the Australian Army live firing range is and where Little River Band got their name.

We got to the hotel we were staying at in Elizabeth Street and met up with Simone, Roxanne, Tasleema, Stuart and Justin our fellow hotel mates and birthday celebrators. The hotel had a very vibrant orange colour on the walls which made me think it was perfect for Bhanglassi to stay at if they ever tour down here. Maybe a band photoshoot for Rollingstone, OK or whatever magazine at that stage of their career is covering them.

We headed out down to the south bank and hired bikes to ride around in the glorious sunshine it was a great time and also some good exercise. We then headed to the roof bar that Amy and me visited last time we were in Melbourne for a couple of post-bike drinks which was great fun.

Melbourne Bikes

That evening we went to St. Kilda and had a fantastic “mexican inspired” dinner after much searching around for something to eat. We were all fully stuffed and really tired from our early morning flights so we headed back to our hotel and fell asleep.

The next day we were up early for a visit to the Queen Victoria Markets, which was a bit like Borough Markets in London but on a smaller scale, here’s Amy buying “3 Cheese for $10″ which was great as the portions were huge and a great appetizer for later that evening.

$10 Cheese

We went to a place called Fitzroy for a lot of shopping fun. Justin went crazy buying clothes out doing all the girls, I ended up buying a top from Myer and Amy bought me some chocolate which was really nice. Fitzroy is a pretty trendy place, it has a lot of posters and stickers eveywhere so I couldn’t help adding a bit of Global Surfari fun to it -

GlobalSurfari.com Street Team

My favourite part of Fitzroy was probably the ATM crime scene -

ATM Carnage

One of my personal highlights of the trip was to find out J’s works for a well known coffee company that only has 85 stores in Australia but 171 in Manhattan and even more in London. He gets a staff discount so we went there and got some coffee and I got explained what coffee machine they are using as well as getting some tips on the coffee machine I should get at home. Here we are outside the coffee house -

Outside the Coffee House

That evening we went to The Long Room for tapas dinner and a multitude of cocktails, it was really good fun and we ate some great food and had an excellent waiter, we then moved on to ‘The Supper Club’ where we had a game of ‘guess the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu’ which turned out to be a 1986 bottle of Château Latour coming in at just under $12,000. I was reading a story in the Economist on the plane about the global food shortage and how a billion people earn $1 a day - which puts it into a rather sad perspective at the waste of money that would be to drink.

After a great weekend it was time to go back to our little airport in the middle of nowhere, here’s our plane coming in to pick us up -

Lets fly Jetstar

A great weekend!

Easter 2008, a break from the normal ritual of going to far North NSW we headed to Fingal Bay instead. Fingal Bay, is a bay about 3 hours drive North of Sydney, slightly south of Seal Rocks.

The scenary up there reminded us all of the television series LOST as it is pretty amazing. On one of the days we went on a walk to an Island which is separated by a sandbar to the mainland. It fills with water which makes the crossing dangerous in rough seas. Fortunetly for us it was pretty calm that day, the pictures don’t really do the scenary justice (although they are very good pictures thanks Marcus and Nancy for letting me use them).

Me Mid-air Fingal Bay

The house we booked into had a trampoline in the garden which provided hours of slightly dangerous fun, here’s Amy doing some special trick -

Amy Trampoline Air

Marcus and Nancy made a special Mars Bar cake, which I believe was one of Scott’s reciepes and involves a lot of sugar. It was absolutely delicious!!!!!

Nancy is a bit of a stunt kite user, here she is on Marcus’ new kite getting some serious air -

Nancy Getting Air with Kite

Unfortunetly that concludes the pictures of people not touching the ground, but here is a great picture of Rachel, Lorraine, Gemma, Amy, Nancy, Josh, Marcus and I around the dinner table with some of the magnificent food that was being cooked that weekend -

Around the Dinner Table

A great weekend and a really relaxing Easter!

UK airport security has reached “ridiculous” on the threat level stages, you are only allowed to take on board one bag and anything you have that has 125ml of liquid must go into a plastic bag and if your hand luggage weighs more than 10kg then back to the check in desk for you! A guy in front of us had his bag weighed and it was 12kg so he wasn’t allowed through security. When you finally think you’ve got through the metal detectors and the bag x-ray you get to another security checkpoint where you have to take your shoes off and they go through an x-ray machine. Then when you think your finally into the shopping area of the terminal you go through another security checkpoint where your greeted by police which semi-automatic machine guns and the spanish inquisition.

On the flight over to Prague you can see the fields from the plane going from a nice green colour to an icy white colour. The temperature in Prague is mild to say the least, the first thing we did after arriving in the country was to buy some mulled wine from a little market stall, here’s Amy buying some with the temp. gauge at a freezing minus six degrees -

Amy, Mulled Wine and -6 degrees

We had a walk around with our mulled wine and checked out the square near the Powder Tower which is one of the sights in Prague, here is me outside one of the buildings in the square wrapped up for the cold -

Cold with Mulled Wine

We walked on a little more and looked for a restaurant to get dinner from, there is a lot of choice and some amazing architecture in the city, this is another square we came across that was selling all sorts of food and drink. It had a stage with a choir singing Christmas songs which was very nice.

Nice Square

We eventually found a pizza place which was off of the main square down another little side street. It had some amazing decor, here is Amy and me enjoying some lovely authentic Prague Pizza?

Prague Pizza

We went into a mall to look for some drinks and came across another C&A Shanghai style. We tried to take a photo outside of it but then the camera tumbled out of our hands and onto the floor from which point it has ceased to work

Looking forward to tomorrow day time to get out and see the sights of Prague and maybe some even see some snow!

Well goodbye China hello England! There is something very strange about waking up in a hotel room in Shanghai on the East Coast of China and then going to bed in a little village in the middle of England the same night. I’ve mostly been in the loft packing boxes to ship to Australia since I’ve been here, but we did go out for a very strange lunch at a German owned Guesthouse in Stratford-upon-Avon.

I made this video in China just before we left -

Or download a higher quality WMV (60meg) of the video for a crisper experience.

“Let China sleep, for when she wakes the world will shake” - Napoleon Bonaparte. China certainly seems to be shaking!

We boarded out China Eastern flight from Sydney to Shanghai. It was a good flight and it had some nice food. The only thing that separated it from any other airline (apart from Singapore Airlines which are the best by a long way) was they didn’t give us little packs of nuts during the flight. The coolest thing about the flight was probably the exercise program that we all did at the end of the flight together, instructed by the air stewardesses and video.

Amy on the plane with lunch

I had visions of China being a very strict country based on its style of government, so I was expecting the airport security to be tight. It was completely the contrary, with no problems getting through customs, immigration and health. We basically handed the pieces of paper we filled out to people, got our bags and then we were in China proper! Getting a taxi was just as easy, we joined the taxi queue and had none of the hassel I had read about, got in the taxi and made our way to our hotel (via the help of a Chinese printout of the directions - that was important as the taxi driver spoke no English). The journey was a bit reminicent of India, travelling at break neck (literally) speeds without the ability to put a seat belt on always gets me a little nervous.

So that night after we got dropped off at the hotel (the wrong one but the right one is next door) we went to a little food place next to it. We ordered spring rolls, pork dumplings and something else which was like a ball but inside and this stuff that looked like it had been poured from an ash tray that had water in it. It actually had a sweet taste but more than a couple of mouth fulls would had been too many.

Our hotel is the Jin Jiang Hotel, where Nixon, the Queen and Chairman Mao have stayed. It is in the French Concession, which is described as the ‘Paris of the East’ - the shops in the area are similar to Sydney’s Oxford Street or London’s Carnaby Street.

On the streets of the French Concession

We went to sleep and I had a bit of a confusing night, setting the alarm clock three hours earlier than Sydney time, which was actually six hours off the actual time. So when I woke up at one am thinking it was seven am and then wondering a few hours later how the Chinese got by with it being pitch black at nine am in the morning! Once I realised my mistake (thanks to Amy) I went back to sleep for another six hours to the ‘real’ morning (which does have daylight).

So the next day starts and we decide to walk down a road called Nanjing Road, which has lots of shops, however, it is not the Western shoppers paradise as I thought it might have been. Globalisation has taken over and you’d be hard pushed to get a bargain or work out what country you were in -

Guess the country?

Nanjing Road took us all the way down to The Bund which has a view of Shanghai Harbour to Pudong, the financial area of Shanghai. The view from The Bund of Pudong is spectacular, consider that none of these sky scrapers were here in the early 90ies -

Pudong!

The large building on the left with the balls is spectacular; it looks like something out of a sci-fi movie set in the year 3038.

We got this psychedelic underground train over to the other side of the river and into Pudong (I made a video of the train ride it was seriously out there). We went to a huge shopping area where Amy had the time of her life in shops that Australia doesn’t have like Zara, H&M, C&A, Next, etams etc. We also tested out China McDonalds (you can’t beat integrating with the local culture) and I have to say its probably the best one I’ve ever had. We got the little crazy train back to the other side and I picked up my only bargain off a street seller, some little wheels you attach to your shoes so you can skate about and help increase the chances of breaking an arm, they also flash colours when you go along on them - all for 50 yuan ($8) - haggled down from 100 yuan ($16) (she haggled herself down, all I had to do was walk away).

After all the shopping, McDonalds and sky scrapers we thought we’d better do some cultural things as we’d kind of forgotten we were in a Communist country of a billion people, so we headed to Yu Yaun Garden which was very beautiful -

Yu Yuan Garden

Next we walked the long road back to our hotel and booked ourself in for dinner at the Jin Jiang Tower (the hotel next door) on the 41st floor, so should get some nice views and photos! Tomorrow we are getting out of town, so hopefully we will get more of a taste of China.

Hot off Seal Rocks 2006, comes Seal Rocks 2007! This time we broke last years 13 people record with an estimated 28 of us!

The place has become extremely popular in the last few years; even we could notice by the amount of camp sites there were on the weekend. It has been on the TV on holiday programs and Canon used it to promote their HV20 camera. Of course, most of the popularity is probably due to the 4.3 million* daily readers of G2007.

Check the video, the music is by one of my favourite bands, BhangLassi -

Higher Quality Windows Media Download (36 meg)

In the video you see a tree getting chopped down, don’t worry it was not to make more room for tents and 4WDs but it looked like it was rotting in the centre and so would have been a bit of a hazard. Actually it was pretty funny when they were chopping it down, Marcus, Dan, Mez and myself were sitting around our camp next to the tent and car, and the guy was chainsawing through it. Half way in the other guy said “woo woo wooo…. the winds blowing that way” and pointed towards us, the tent and my car. That is why in the video you see the truck pulling it along as it comes down.

This was the first time that we visited Seal Rocks where the main beach behind the camp site was not like a washing machine, in fact it was the opposite, a beautiful clean beach with lovely waves breaking (although a bit too close to shore to surf).

Sunny Days and Clean Water

It was a really nice trip and sad to be back, the video embedded in this post sums it all up. If you have the time and bandwidth, the high quality version is well worth the download (it’s 3x the size but 10x the quality in my opinion).

* Estimate - actual readers may vary.

This bank holiday weekend Amy and I went to Nelson Bay on the NSW coast about 3 hours drive (including traffic) North of Sydney, about 45 minutes South of Seal Rocks. This post is geo-tagged so you can find out exactly where it is.

It has some amazing scenary and beaches in this part of Australia and we were lucky enough to get an entire weekend of blue skies and high twenties temperatures. We book a internet deal at ‘The Landmark’ hotel, which was a studio apartment with views of the water, it was very beautiful -

Earth Shadow from the Balcony at Nelsons Bay

We visited some of the beaches and found that Zenith Beach was quite easily our favourite, it was also completely out of the wind, there was no waves there though which was ashame but enough of a shore break to get some serious body boarding under my belt. Amy will not go in the water even though it is not cold at all, apparently its ‘no where near as warm as Queensland’, however this goes on all year around, even in summer.

Zenith Lefts

We took a little trip to One Mile Beach where there was more of a wave and I mananged to get out on the board in some very small waves but it was good fun. We then took a drive to Stockton Beach, which is a 32 mile long beach, easily visible from Google Earth, of just a huge sand dune. It looks like you are in the middle of a desert from some angles -

Stockton Dunes

Amy took this great photo of a Camel, which you can ride in exchange for cash -

Camels on Stockton Beach

That night we went to ‘Hogs Breath’ restaurant in Nelson Bay which turned out to be a bit like TGI Fridays. We then went back to out studio and had some nice desert wine and watched films on the cable TV the room had.

The next day we walked up this massive hill next to Zenith beach for a great view of the beaches, Bhanglassi were recording their new album this weekend, so in support I wore the Bhanglassi Tape T-Shirt. Here is Amy and I at the top of the hill (forgot the name) with the great view in the background -

Top of the Hill

Here’s a view back into Shoal Bay, beyond the point is Nelson Bay, you can see the wind was quite strong on the this side, but completely blocked out on the East facing beaches -

Shoal Bay from the top of the Hill

We couldn’t really find anything wrong with Zenith, so we went back there again for another day of amazingly clear water and no crowds, which you really can’t fault, here’s me again killing some 0.5ft waves in crystal clear water -

Clear Shark Free (hopefully) Waters

This is the path that leads to the Beach, with Amy standing at the top looking beach ready!

Amy at the top of the Steps

We met Tanya, Neal and Matilda (their little baby) at a Thai restaurant, Neal is an old colleague of mine and current colleague of Amy who moved from London as well, so it was nice to see them and their energetic 9 month old.

The next morning we checked out and went back to the beach again in the morning. It was hot and hazy and we noticed smoke coming from a nearby beach. Eventually this helicopter showed up and started scooping water from the sea to put out the fires -

First day of Bushfire Season

All the great weather did have this bad side effect, the start of the bush fire season. Fires destroyed a home in Port Stephens on Monday morning.

Apart from the bush fires on the last day, a great weekend with very good weather and a real relaxing time! More photos on the book.

Believe it or not ’stralia isn’t just blue skies, hot weather and beaches. Some parts (very few parts) get snow and inland from Sydney just past Canberra is Mount Kosciuszko the highest mountain on the Australian mainland. It is a mere 6 hour drive from Sydney so Esther, Rach, Amy, Gemma, Mike, Matt, Chris and myself headed down for a long weekend of ski.

Amy and I both decided to learn how to snow board instead of ski, which I have only tried once in 1995 in Austria for a week.

Friday Flats Learners Slope

It was good fun learning how to snowboard although most of the time was spent falling over, we had a lesson on both days and by the end of the second lesson we had learnt all the basics to snow board down a mountain.

Here is Amy on a lesson practicing ‘toe side’ which was pretty difficult as you go down the mountain backwards but it necessary for the S style line that you have to take.

Amy in green jacket ‘toe-side’

Some of my old work friends were also on the slopes learning to snow board at the same time, it was good to see Sausage Dog, Corinne and Naomi all learning on the same weekend as us, a small world!

Après-ski was a lot of fun, we stayed at a pet friendly eco-alpine bed and breakfast called Bimblegumbie, which had dogs running around and lots of very interesting things that Prudence the owner had collected.

Bimblegumbie Sign

The first night Rach had booked dinner at the Crackenback Cottage Restaurant which was absolutely delicious, we had the full courses and really enjoyed ourselves -

The gang at the Crackenback Cottage Restaurant

After a couple of drinks we went into the Crackenback Maze, which is one of the largest Mazes in the Southern Hemisphere. In the dark and after a few drinks it was very difficult to find the way out, almost to the point of thinking we would never get out. luckily Mike used the ‘always turn left’ technique to find his way out, so at least we knew it was possible for the rest of us!

Stuck in the Crackenback Maze!

The second night dinner was cooked at Bimblegumbie by Gemma and Chris where they made some great food. My job was to break the bread into small pieces, Mike asked me to try and re-create Stonehenge with bread bits and align it correct with the light in the next room which looked like the sun to try and re-create some kind of summer solstice pilgrimage for neo-druids -

Stonehenge Ciabatta Recreation Photography

Michael even went to the extend of fashioning a piece of cucumber into a druid using a pen; I am fairly sure Michael has a semisynthetic psychedelic drug addiction.

After dinner Chris borrowed Prudence’s guitar and Michael got his drums out for an acoustic performance of some songs and even some Bhanglassi numbers.

On the last day of snowboarding (and some very tired arms) we headed back to Sydney, with a quick stop off for dinner in Canberra. Near the Ski resort is the town of Jindabyne, which has some amazing geographic features -

Jindabyne from Alpine Way

The motion picture epic Jindabyne is an award winning film that is set in the town, where you get to see a lot of the amazing scenery it has to offer.

An excellent ski trip (aching now) thanks for organising it Rach.

Taryn and Wade came to visit us for a long weekend and to see some of the sites and sounds that the city of Sydney had to offer.

Amy, Wade and Taryn at Bower Restaurant for breakfast

We had a Manly day and toured up the Northern Beaches all the way to Whale Beach, which is only one beach shy of Palm Beach aka Palmy/Summer Bay. First stop was North Head, which has great views out to sea as well as back into Sydney, we even saw some Whales passing up the coast (although we only saw the spouts of water coming out no breaching).

Sydney from North Head

We had a coffee at Whale Beach looking over the sea, we also had some very smelly cheese which we couldn’t eat. That night we went to Cafe Sydney where Amy took me for my birthday last year. We sat outside with a view over Circular key and had some fantastic food as well as some fantastic service from some interesting waiters.

Cafe Sydney

The lamp on the table in the above picture is produced by an Australian company called NEOZ, they were very good but no doubt very expensive.

Taryn had never been to the Blue Mountains before so we headed up there. Our plan was to go to the Jenolan Caves, however we underestimated the distance to them so instead we went to the Three Sisters and Scenic World, where we went with Andres and Yami, the ride down the mountain is still just as fun.

Blue Mountains Shutdown

That night we had Tapas at a Spanish place near our flat in Manly. It was very nice, when we were there a group of girls came in and one of them was wearing a non-existent dress which we all had a laugh at. The next day we were driving around Kings Cross and on a balconly over looking the main road the same girl was dancing at 4pm in the afternoon. Insane!

Tapas in Manly Yum

We got home not very late that night and Amy and Taryn were straight under the covers watching TV -

Not hard to tell they are sisters

An excellent weekend which felt like we were on holiday ashame it had to end!